The First Facility Management Blog

Last Wednesday (3/19/08), Time Blogger Lisa Takeuchi Cullen shared this fact: the cubicle is 40 years old. Cullen’s lack of enthusiasm for this mid-aged workplace fixture was not difficult to detect. Frankly, Cullen seems to despise this “soul-destroying workspace we call the modern cubicle.” Those are her words, not mine.

The only celebratory aspect of this milestone that Cullen could find was her discovery of a 2001 collaboration between IDEO (a world leader in the design of products, services, and environments) and Scott Adams (”father” of Dilbert), to create the ideal cubicle.

Since 1989, Scott Adams’s comic strip Dilbert has chronicled the life of his title character in the impersonal “cubicle farms”of the modern office. One of the most popular comic strips in the world, Dilbert resonates with anyone who’s ever worked in a maze of identical offices that seemed designed to make the greatest number of workers equally uncomfortable.

Scott Adams approached IDEO to create Dilbert’s Ultimate Cubicle, an attempt to address the myriad issues connected with partition-based offices: lack of personal control, absence of privacy, inadequate space and tools, and so on. IDEO designers created and lived in their own “Dilbertville” within the San Francisco office for several weeks to gain empathy for typical cubicle dwellers and to gain firsthand insights into the challenges they face. Combining that experience with input from Scott Adams and the cumulative advice of thousands of e-mails from Dilbert fans, the designers created a series of quick prototype spaces to explore a range of ideas, from the serious to the outrageous. Fred Dust headed up the IDEO project team for Dilbert’s Ultimate Cubicle.

The result is a modular cubicle that allows each worker to select the components from a “kit of parts” and create a space based on his or her tastes and lifestyle. Practical considerations include modules for a seat, a computer, and a display (complete with “boss monitor”). The floor modules lift for storage or flip between artificial grass and tatami mats; the light modules at the top mimic the sun’s movement throughout the day.

Other more whimsical modules provide a hammock, an aquarium, and a punching bag.The project showcases IDEO’s highly adaptable design process and uses humor and optimism to explore the “blue sky” area between Dilbert’s problems and real-life solutions available today.

From the CNN archives:

Adams says, “I’ve had tens of thousands of messages over the years from disgruntled cubicle dwellers who were griping about something about their office experience. Somehow, accidentally, I realized I’d become a leading authority on what’s wrong with cubicles. You don’t have to be Thomas Edison to realize there’s a product possibility there.”

(Pictured, left: The Ultimate Cubicle)

Cullen’s favorite feature of the Ultimate Cubicle? The hideaway hammock, thus proving the maxim, “every cloud has a silver lining.”

There is just no pleasing some people. Sheeshh!

Many thanks to TFM Reader Maria Vickers for submitting this information.